SHARE THIS

6th October 2017

This might sound like a silly remark, but it’s quite common for us to utter it. The situation goes something like this…

We’ll be talking with business owners about how things are going…

How’s your website doing?

Is it bringing in any new leads?

Are you getting much traffic?

The answer to all these questions usually leads us to look at the website in question and within just a couple of minutes there are the usual telltale signs that the website looks good and has a lot of great features and functions, but underneath the bonnet…

We’ll save these telltale signs for another blog post but first, let’s look at the whys and wherefores.

Why Didn’t They SEO Your Website?

Sometimes, a great website design is just that – a great website design. It looks good. It has the wow factor and everyone who sees it loves it. But that’s not enough. How many people are actually seeing it?

Did all the “oohs” and “aahs” come from people in your business? Did everyone who was involved in signing it off love it? Then that’s great. But if those are the only people who see your website then what’s the point?

Now the first reason you’ve got a website without any SEO functionality is that the web designers did just that – design. Web design is a sophisticated mix of art and science and specialists are very good at building good-looking websites.

But it takes the input of digital marketing specialists at the time of build to make sure that your site is created properly. If there is no SEO/SEM, no content management nor social media involvement with the design then it falls flat on its face.

Maybe the designers do not have the resource. Maybe they don’t have the skills. Well, that’s an issue because, in our opinion, every website absolutely MUST have SEO baked in from the very start.

What if they do but the client doesn’t have the budget for SEO and decided to go for the cheaper option, cutting out the SEO features and functions?

Again, there really is no excuse. If you build a site that has not been SEO’d then it will probably fail.

The old line from the film “Field of Dreams” comes to mind here…

“Build it and they will come”

Well, in our experience that isn’t the case.

If you have a website built but nobody knows it’s there, then how is anybody going to find out about it?

OK, So What Now?

It’s never too late to apply SEO techniques to your business’ website but you have been at a disadvantage having to do it so late in the game. You have probably missed an increase in traffic at the launch of your new site. When was that? Last month? Not so bad. Last year? Oh, that’s not good. A few years ago? OK, now that’s a problem.

But don’t worry.

SEO is best talked about and integrated during the website conceptualisation and build phase and, if you’re lucky, it can still be fully applied at this late stage.

However, be aware that some things cannot be undone or fixed immediately. For instance, you could be on the “wrong” Content Management System (CMS), have the “incorrect” templates or be held back by the fact that the e-commerce plugin is not the most SEO-friendly or customisable one.

Also, your information architecture might be a bit of a mess, your content might be a bit “thin” and the supporting social media structures could be somewhat flimsy if not non-existent.

But again, don’t worry.

As a digital marketing agency with a great many years of experience, we have a solution for you.

Pick up the phone and give us a call on 020 3146 4341 and we’ll have a chat about your website.

We’re happy to give you our insights into what we can do now, in the medium term and for your long-term traffic strategy.

We’ll probably perform a website audit for you so that you can see what’s wrong and what needs to be done.

Then you can look forward to the peace of mind that your site really is in ship shape and you’re getting the traffic you’ve worked hard to earn.

SHARE THIS

15th May 2017

Every Business Needs a Website, Right?

Of course, we are going to say that, aren’t we? We’ll tell you that you need funky business cards, glossy brochures, a nice prospectus, cool flyers, wicked posters, eye-catching bumper stickers, a shiny new website and some SEO and PPC services thrown in to boot, right?

Well, yes. We do all that. And more. We are Clever Marketing.

But we are not going to advise your business to do everything, especially if, in our experience, we can see it’s not an essential for you. Not every business will need brochures and flyers, posters and stickers.

SHARE THIS

27th March 2017

Blogs are an essential element of the digital marketing mix as each post drives traffic to your website. It’s relatively easy to set a blog up and build a following but it takes time to ensure it receives regular traffic.

Successful blogs deliver quality content on a regular basis, which means they’re crawled more often by Google with the opportunity to generate potential leads higher. We take a look at what you can do to maximise your visibility and drive more traffic to your blog.

Write useful content your target audience will share

Your target audience can make a huge difference to the popularity of your posts. So do consider what kind of content is relevant to them and how you can make your posts more shareable. Evergreen content like “how to” guides, tips or education based posts are often popular choices although they’re not for everyone.

Content should be a key part of any digital marketing strategy. Having an editorial plan in place will result in greater consistency, whether posts are focused on a specific theme, topic or style for example. Google Analytics is, of course, essential to finding out where your visitors are from, their demographic profile and what kind of content is most popular among other things.

Make your content SEO friendly

There are a number of ways you can ensure your blog is SEO friendly starting with how it’s structured, what headings you use and which signal words are included. You should always optimise the length of your posts so they’re over 300 words and make sure you link to previous content where relevant.

Your featured keyword, which will help people find you, should appear in your post heading, title, URL, content and meta description. Consider what terms and phrases your target audience might type into Google when looking for the information they require. This will help you identify the best keywords to use. Research can also be conducted using tools like the Adwords Keyword Planner.

Reference your own content regularly

Readers appreciate blog posts with useful links so you should reference relevant content where appropriate, whether it’s a post of your own or someone else’s. Links to relevant content are well received if they’re in context and provide value. They should never link to top-level web pages and any anchor text must be natural.

It might be worth creating a list of internal content for the purpose of blogging. If you haven’t already catalogued your own site’s content, consider an SEO audit or a website audit where a crawl will identify all your assets.

Let us know if you need a full website crawl, we can offer this as a standalone service or as part of a free website audit including performance, security, SEO and mobile-friendliness

Use social media to share posts and boost traffic

Leveraging your most effective social media channels is a fundamental way to boost traffic to your blog. Curating others’ content is great for encouraging people to share your content and interact. As well as the major social networking sites, consider social community sites such as StumbleUpon, Reddit or Pinterest as well. You will need to add value to these sites to get the return but the same applies to any social network. You get out what you put in.

Find influencers and join the conversation

Do you know who your influencers are? If not, you can easily create a Twitter list for example with the most relevant so you can start to build relationships. Joining relevant communities and Twitter chats is a great way to find new topics for discussion too. You should also research which hashtags are most appropriate to your industry. Including relevant @mentions in social media posts will also help increase your reach and visibility.

These are just a few ideas to get you thinking about how you can drive traffic to your blog. For further information, contact our Digital Marketing Manager, Paul Mackenzie Ross, at Woking’s Design Agency Clever Marketing on 020 3146 4341.

SHARE THIS

5th January 2017

The New Year is all about re-evaluating and that means it’s the perfect time to refresh your website. A lot can change in the space of 12 months so it’s a great opportunity to ensure you’re attracting and retaining the right kind of customers.

January is an ideal time to review your website and how it’s performing so it’s in line with your business objectives. Here are our top tips to refresh your website so you can position yourself ahead of the competition. (more…)

14th December 2016

These being just some of the technical issues faced on-page and off-page. In part 2, we take a look at another 5 SEO issues and what you can do to resolve them.

6. Missing alt attributes & broken images

Alt attributes (commonly and mistakenly called ALT tags – ALT is an attribute of an IMG tag) help search engines like Google understand what an image is about. If the attributes associated with that image are missing and there’s no description, it can cause SEO problems. Image alt attributes should include your keywords to ensure they’re categorised in the right way. We covered broken links in our last post – broken images cause similar issues in that they can lead to a poor user experience. Both these issues can be overcome by ensuring your alt attributes accurately describe your images. That way they will be properly indexed in search results too.

7. Low text to HTML ratio

Low text to HTML ratio means there’s much more back-end HTML code than there is text. Often it’s a sign of a poorly coded website (for example with above average Javascript, Flash and inline styling), hidden copy or the site is slow loading.You can increase the speed of your site by removing code that’s not needed. Also, move inline scripts and styles to separate files and add relevant on page text where it’s required. Other aspects you might want to check include removing white spaces, using CSS for styling and formatting, resizing images (removing those you don’t need) and keeping the size of your page under 300kb.

You can increase the speed of your site by removing code that’s not needed. Also, move inline scripts and styles to separate files and add relevant on page text where it’s required.Other aspects you might want to check include removing white spaces, using CSS for styling and formatting, resizing images (removing those you don’t need) and keeping the size of your page under 300kb.

Other aspects you might want to check include removing white spaces, using CSS for styling and formatting, resizing images (removing those you don’t need) and keeping the size of your page under 300kb.

8. H1 tag and title issues

A title tag is what appears in your search results with an H1 tag what visitors to your website see on a page. While multiple H1 tags can appear on a page, it’s important to get the hierarchy right to ensure your website is indexed in the right way. H1s should be consistent with title tags but not the same. Ideally, you should use one H1 tag per page with H2 tags breaking up the content.

9. Low word count

When Google introduced its Panda updates way back in 2011, the idea was to reduce the amount of “thin content” in the search results. Around this time the notion that web pages should contain a minimum of 300 words came about and that thought still persists today with even the popular Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress still touting the “recommended minimum 300 words”.

While there is no set word count to rank with a search engine, the preference is long-form pages with the text including keywords and phrases. Google is known for ranking websites with more depth and longer content. Equally, visitors to your website want to see content that is relevant to the topic they searched for. Even if you’re sharing an image-led post or infographic, it will need some context behind it. Evergreen content is often popular with lists, tips and how to guides the most well-received.

So remember – google likes high-quality content. In its own words:

“…sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

10. Too many on-page links

While all websites will include on-page links, having too many links is unnatural and can dilute the value of a page. It’s important therefore that links are relevant and useful. This way you can ensure your website will rank well and have a natural link profile. If you remove the low-quality links from your website, you will provide a better user experience particularly for those accessing your website via a mobile and table. High-quality links will improve your SEO ranking.

There are so many ranking signals that Google considers for SEO, which are constantly changing and evolving. If you or your company needs help navigating the minefield is that search engine optimisation, feel free to get in touch and ask for a free SEO audit. Better still, you can let us evaluate your website speed & performance, security, mobile-friendliness and SEO in a complete website audit – claim your free website audit now.

If you need further help and assistance, with your 10 SEO problems, get in touch with Woking web agency Clever Marketing on 020 3146 4341.

Our Digital Marketing Manager alone has nearly 20 years of SEO, SEO, PPC and content marketing experience so he’ll be able to help you out.

SHARE THIS

17th August 2016

If you have a great website and you’re generating regular content but not getting discovered by prospective clients, it’s likely you’ll need to improve your search results. The most effective way to achieve higher visibility is to seek out the services of an experienced Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) agency. But what do you need to consider when selecting the right agency? And how can an SEO agency achieve the desired impact on your natural search results?

SEO Agency Checklist: The 7 Rs

1. Requirements

First of all, before you start to consider what an SEO agency can do for you, you need to establish what you need.Typically, there are a number of factors to take into consideration such as the technical side that incorporates the structure of a site, on page optimisation (through keywords, labels and metadata for example) and off page optimisation through backlinks from other sites. If you’re not sure what you need, think about the task – is it about increasing your page rank, local search results or sales growth?

Typically, there are a number of factors to take into consideration such as the technical side that incorporates the structure of a site, on page optimisation (through keywords, labels and metadata for example) and off page optimisation through backlinks from other sites. If you’re not sure what you need, think about the task – is it about increasing your page rank, local search results or sales growth?

2. Reputation

As with any industry, experience is key. Who have they worked with previously? A quality SEO agency will have a portfolio of clients – either in a single category or across a range of categories. If the breadth of an SEO agency’s client list is predominantly within a specific category, this demonstrates expertise in that field with a more varied client spread highlighting their ability to adopt varied SEO tactics. Regardless of their clients, both current and historical, any digital marketing agency must be willing to share success stories and testimonials.

3. Retention

It’s important to understand the tenure of an SEO agency’s clients too. How long have they worked with this particular digital marketing agency? Typically clients that have remained with the same agency for a period of time, either retained or on a project basis, will have great trust in each other, ensuring a better partnership which in turn leads to a more measurable return on investment. On the flip side, SEO agencies that do not deliver results will have a low retention rate.

4. Realism

It’s important to have realistic expectations and goals when looking for an SEO agency. Agencies offering a guarantee they can get you on page 1 of Google, not adhering to Google’s webmaster best practices and not willing to share methodologies should be avoided. (We address this in our article How Do I Rank Higher on Google?)

You can always do your own research and see where an SEO agency appears in search rankings. It takes time to climb search engine results and it’s competitive.

Think about the size and locality of your SEO agency too as they will dictate fee level. Fees should be transparent so find out exactly what you’ll get for your budget.

5. Rigour

An SEO agency should have a clearly defined process that is implemented following strategic thought based on an analysis of your needs – not an ‘off the shelf’ solution. An agency of note should be able to talk you through their approach and how they’re going to achieve your objectives. Their methodology should leverage all SEO/SEM angles such as the structure of your site and on page optimisation like keywords, labels and metadata to off page backlinks which raise awareness of your content on other websites. Find out if the digital marketing agency has expertise in maximising visibility at a local level too.

Find out if the SEO agency has expertise in maximising visibility at a local level too.

6. Reporting

Your SEO agency should agree on measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with you. These should include SEO campaigns goals you agree on with a technical review at the outset.

Performance and Return On Investment (ROI) should be reported regularly (ie; monthly) using the likes of Google Analytics to track improvements. If there’s a drop in search engine rankings, this can then be tracked with measures put in place to push it back up. Search strategies often require frequent content updates so it’s important your SEO agency is accessible and able to offer guidance where required.

7. Relationships

Digital marketing agencies play a vital role in that they should educate and inform, providing you with a greater understanding of the process, in turn enabling you to work closely to ensure overall objectives are achieved.

A good SEO agency will also be able to help develop external relationships such as other site owners and influencers.

Looking for SEO management services? Need an SEO agency to handle all the digital marketing that you can never quite get around to doing all of?

SHARE THIS

4th December 2014

Once completely disparate entities, SEO (search engine optimisation) and PR (public relations) strategies have grown closer over recent years. Modern SEO tactics show a focus on building high authority links – which is essentially about getting brands to talk about and work with you. At its heart this is also what PR is all about, making PR a key component of the “new” search engine optimisation method.

In addition, Google is increasingly ignoring links from low quality or spammy domains, in order to keep serving up the most relevant and useful content to its users. Therefore, what marketers now need to concentrate on is how to accumulate higher quality links from authoritative sources. One of the main ways you can do this is through combining SEO with your PR strategy.

So why should you use PR to enhance the SEO efforts within your organisation, and what are the benefits to your link-building strategy?

PR Outreach Strengthens Social Media Campaigns

When you create a new piece of content, it’s likely that you already share it on your professional social media channels to encourage traffic and engagement. However, taking a PR approach to social media marketing can help to amplify your reach even more significantly through outreach.

When you approach partners or others in your industry to share your content as part of a mutually beneficial agreement, this can result in further distribution of your content and the potential growth of your channel. There is also the possibility of links and brand mentions, which have become more important than ever thanks to Google’s latest batch of algorithm updates. Social signals have also become much more important as a ranking factor, making social media indispensable in your SEO strategy.

Building Meaningful Relationships Through Partnerships

An extension of social collaboration is through partnerships. Whether these are with other brands, bloggers or journalists and the media, all of these PR-based relationships provide the kinds of traffic and link opportunities that SEO experts dream of.

Creating meaningful content in collaboration with others is a great way to diversify your output and also reach new audiences. A few good links from authoritative resources will make a bigger difference to your traffic and ranking results than hundreds of spammy ones.

It’s a well-known fact that websites such as the BBC and Financial Times have exceptionally high domain authority, and therefore a link from either of these sites is likely to send your search traffic sky-rocketing. Using your media contacts aggregated through your PR work will do wonders for your search metrics.

Authenticity and Trust

You’ll know by now that Google is becoming less and less forgiving of black hat SEO techniques and is placing more emphasis on genuine, good quality content. Therefore SEO needs to adapt to survive, and one way to keep your strategy effective and relevant is to ensure it is based on principles of authenticity and trust, rather than isolated on-page tactics.

PR has always focused on a good story, and is fundamentally about building and maintaining a positive public image – something only genuine and trustworthy content can do. Incorporating these principles into your content will garner the right kind of recognition from search engines.

Competitions

A tactic long used successfully in the PR sphere is the competition or contest – the idea of winning something for free has mass appeal and it offers you the dual benefit of engaging audiences and attracting both on and offline attention.

While competitions might not always mean masses of press coverage, users are likely to share them on social media, tagging their friends and spreading awareness. Through hosting such events, your company will get a reputation for generosity and creativity.

Adopt a “People Before Links” Mentality

As mentioned previously, it’s more important than ever to place people’s genuine interests before a pure link-building exercise. PR people are traditionally more up-to-date on what people are reading and sharing than SEOs, who might be more interested in specific ways of increasing traffic and the analytics behind it. They might look at keywords for an insight into what a user is searching, but their prime motivation will always be key search metrics, while PRs only really need to concentrate on delivering something with positive and mass appeal.

Taking this viewpoint can help SEO specialists to create content that is even more engaging and shareable, leading to further clicks and links.

Whether you take care of both your SEO and PR in-house or you outsource them, it’s more important than ever before that they become integrated. Essentially, PR and SEO are still two very different entities and practices, but when used together they can further their respective goals of creating a positive image for your brand in the public eye, as well as ensuring your content receives the rankings and traffic that it deserves.

What Google now values above all else is what PR specialists have been doing for years: connecting, promoting and creating useful content.

Does your business need help with SEO? Would you like to take advantage of Clever Marketing’s years of experience in search engine optimisation and public relations?

LET'S START CREATING

This website uses cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. Read about how we use cookies and how you can control them in our Cookie Notice. Otherwise, we’ll assume you’re OK to continue. Find out more.